This article is participating in the Nouns x Kiwi Writing Contest
One of the founders of Nouns, Seneca, posed a question: Can Nouns be the face of crypto? What would it mean for the industry at large if Nouns were to become a household name?
I want to address the ‘can’ part of that question. What would it take for Nouns to become a household name or the face of crypto?
There may be multiple parts to the answer, but this is my starting point:
Nouns needs a community-owned story.
The Nouns Story Emerges…
When I got fully engrossed in Nouns, it was early summer of 2022. ‘The Noun Square’ daily show was just getting started. Some of the best and most Nounish people created a daily ritual to celebrate the new Noun. These nounish folks were laying out all the Nounish news, having the best Nouns people on the show, and keeping the vibe fun and informative.
As that summer went on and Nouns celebrated its 1st Anniversary with a 24-hour Twitter Space, the story of Nouns was much clearer then. The prominent idea was that Nouns was seeking to be a web3 Disney and the Noggles were going to be the Nike Swoosh of web3. Sometimes Nouns founder 4156 would say it himself on a podcast or The Noun Square. Other times prominent Nounish folks would refer to it and amplify the meaning for newcomers.
This was the time when the vibe around props was giving glasses to kids and sending Aubtoshi out as ‘Nouns On The Ground.’ Nouns Esports was just getting started and we didn’t know the proliferatooor it would become. ‘Gnars’ was the model subcommunity. There was ‘Mucho Love’ bringing toys and coloring books to sick and underprivileged kids.
Not that there weren’t challenges during this time, but the story was closer to a community-owned story about a web3 Disney and a web3 Swoosh.
The Nouns Story Obscured…
In the Fall of 2022, the Nouns story changed for many reasons that are beyond my intent here. But good props by highly regarded Nounish builders were getting grilled for every dollar, every idea, and every decision which made it tough to get props passed. Some stated explicitly that Nounish builders should do their work for less than the going rate. There became a couple vocal outliers that proclaimed there was a Nounish Cabal lining each others’ pockets. It’s worth noting that nothing had really changed except the story. Good builders were still building. Nouns folk were still Nounish. The only thing that changed was the vocal minority was shouting a new story louder than any other story. This unsettling time was eventually followed by the fork--A chaotic time that threatened to kill the Nouns story.
The Nouns Story Reemerges In The Shadows…
Here is why this brief history of the Nouns story is important. Recently there have been many great signs of the return of the elements from the summer of 2022. You can hear the whispers of web3 Disney and web3 Swoosh again as you see great builders and props doing their thing—Variety Club Christmas party and Nounish car journey across Australia, Nouns Animated Shorts, The Rise of Blus, Quack & Lola, Nouns Town, and the incredible success of Esports, among others.
The great builders have returned—actually, most of them had never left. They just kept building.
But one thing hasn’t returned: The Nouns Story
The Nouns Story Rediscovered And Proliferated To The World…
What is the current Nouns story? What is the 1 or 2 sentence explanation of what Nouns is about?
Well, it depends who you ask. You wouldn’t get a different answer from every person, but I suspect you would get some version of about 10 fairly different answers.
Here is the short explanation from nouns.wtf:
“Nouns are an experimental attempt to improve the formation of on-chain avatar communities. While projects such as CryptoPunks have attempted to bootstrap digital community and identity, Nouns attempt to bootstrap identity, community, governance, and a treasury that can be used by the community.”
No whispers of Disney or a Swoosh there.
There is often a lot of talk about the protocols being built. The fork was a difficult time, but it felt like the story became: Nouns is building a protocol that other DAOs can use for a fork mechanism to allow unsatisfied holders to exit. That’s fair and true enough. That has a place to be talked about and even celebrated, but it can’t be the story.
Even along the way a popular idea has been: “Nouns funds builders.” My constant thought has always been: ‘to do what?’ I want to hear the Nouns story in the second part of that sentence.
“Nouns funds builders to make Nouns a household name and the face of crypto.”
“Nouns funds builders to make Nouns the web3 Disney and to make the Noggles the web3 Swoosh.”
You get the idea…
So, we need to rediscover the Nouns story, but I also said we need to own it.
For many props in Nouns it often seems the underlying rationale behind the prop is: The proposer is taking what they do well and what they like to do and wants to do it in or for Nouns. That may sound good to many. But that leads to a very scattered building—some would say this is a feature, not a bug. I think this rationale is backward. The Nouns story should guide the community and builders into what Nouns needs, and builders should ask themselves where they could meet a community-recognized need.
Let’s make this concrete: Building the web3 Disney and Swoosh probably would have us evaluate the heightened focus we’ve seen on front ends, protocols, and dev experiments. Does it need front end(s)? Of course. Does it need protocols? Without question. Should we allow devs to experiment? Sure. There is a lot of dev work to be done and discovered. But it can’t become the story. Often there’s so much excitement around dev work and so much support for dev work, that it takes on a story of its own. Understand me clearly: Some of the greatest achievements have come from the dev work being done. This isn’t a dev-bashing article. It’s a perspective article on ‘The Nouns Story.’ Compare, for instance, the time, resources, and excitement for dev work and protocols with the same for marketing and outward-facing awareness efforts---and I’m hesitant to even mention the term ‘onboarding?’
Owning the story as a community will help us vote on props. I realize people enjoy the vibe: let ‘em cook, build cool stuff, and build things I like--and that’s a valid option of a story for Nouns.
But the question Seneca asked is: Can Nouns be the face of crypto? Can it become a household name?
The first thing it needs in my opinion, is a rediscovered excitement for the community-owned story that reflects the spreading of Nounishness and guides the allotment of time, resources, and excitement.
Do we want to build a web3 Disney? Do we want the Noggles to be the web3 Swoosh?
Let’s rediscover the excitement of that story and become proliferatooors of that story.
